Texas Earns First-Ever Road Win in Ontario by 3-1 Margin

The Reign scored first, but Texas did all the scoring that mattered in the end. The Stars defeated Ontario in California for the first time ever. Matej Stransky collected the game winner early in the 3rd and Remi Elie tacked on an empty netter to set the final score.

Former Star Jack Campbell suffered just his 4th regulation loss of the year. Maxime Lagace earned his third straight start, collecting the win with 21 of 22 stopped.

Here's the release:

Matej Stranksy buried the game-winner early in period three and the Texas Stars defense held up the rest of the way to pull out a 3-1 road win over the first-place Ontario Reign on Wednesday night in front of 7,602 fans in attendance at Citizens Business Bank Arena.

It was the Stars’ first road win over Ontario in franchise history. Maxime Lagace stopped 21 of 22 shots in net to earn his 11th win of the season for Texas (17-13-1-2). Brendan Ranford (goal, assist) and Gemel Smith (two assists) each tallied multi-point games for the Stars. With the win, Texas finished their season series taking three of four games against the Reign (17-7-6-0).

Texas continues its four-game road trip on Friday when they visit the Tucson Roadrunners at 8:05 p.m. CST.

Stransky’s game-winner came 2:22 into the third off a long offensive cycle with Ranford and Smith. Smith slipped a centering feed from behind the net to set up Stransky in front for his team-leading 12th of the season. From there, Lagace turned aside the eight shots he faced in the final period to protect the Texas lead.

Ontario’s Adrian Kempe opened the scoring with a power play goal at 7:48 of the first for his eighth of the season. With just over five minutes to play in period two, Smith generated a rebound chance that Ranford stuffed home for his sixth of year to knot things back up at 1-1.

Ontario’s final push with the extra-attacker was negated when Kempe took a holding penalty with 95 seconds to play. Remi Elie added an empty-net goal for the Stars in the closing seconds to seal the win.

Both teams tallied a power play goal as Texas went 1-for-3 and Ontario finished 1-for-5.

The loss was just the fourth for Ontario in their last 15 games. Jack Campbell suffered the loss with 19 saves.

Tonight's lines:
Gurianov-Morin-DeFazio
Ranford-Smith-Stransky
Dickinson-Dowling-Elie
Herbert-Fyten-Werek

Honka-Nemeth
Bodnarchuk-Backman
Mangene-Stevenson

Lagace

Injuries, scratches, and notes:
Bystrom, Ully, Ebert, Van Brabant (scratch)

Tonight's attendance was 7,602.

AHL Gamesheet - Texas at Ontario - January 11 2017